2015, a new year, a fresh start and a chance to make this year the best one yet. At least that’s what most of us think at the turn of a new year, but already and the end of first month in this brand new year bad news rears its ugly head. The German Inverter manufacturer SMA have revealed some troubling news regarding their future as a company and what 2015 will bring for them and their staff.
Based in Niestetal – Germany, SMA is one of the world’s largest Inverter manufacturers by market share are undergoing a restructure within their company. A proposed 1600 jobs will be lost by the end of July 2015, 1300 of which are in Germany itself, a dramatic increase from the formerly announced 600 job cuts last year, said to take place by the end of 2015. Well I guess February is before the end of the year.
All this talk of job cuts comes as a result of current profit margins for SMA, in an effort to cut the companies’ costs by €160 million the corporates of SMA are looking to reduce their break-even point to less than €700 million by ‘refocusing on important development projects’.
SMA inverters have had a huge impact on the Solar PV market for many years, their actions as a company have a greater effect on the Solar industry as a whole. When they bought out the Chinese SMA Inverter manufacturer Zeversolar back in 2012 SMA looked to get a foothold in the Chinese market of Inverters, but 3 years later SMA are struggling to compete with the Asian manufacturers’ driven price pressure set to fall by 10 per cent.
Without the competing force of the German Inverter manufacturers will the Chinese be able to establish dominance in the Solar PV Inverter market or can SMA cut the fat and emerge stronger than ever?
